His Little Secret

7. Jake from College

A loud laughter roared in the empty pub, as Gab and Emmy stood over the other side of the bar counter, cleaning up the glasses and having them placed over the showcase behind them with Emilia and Andy sitting on the bar stools opposite to them.

Emilia was not in her best mood as she sipped on her cold beer, rolling her eyes and trying her best to ignore her friends, who were laughing at her misery after finding out what had happened with her, earlier that day when her shirt ripped open and she laid bare on top of her boss.

“I still can’t believe it. Two continues strike, with you flashing your boss.”

Emmy pointed out and Gab held up the counter top, as he tried to control his laughter and catch a breath.

“This is even funnier when my sister peed her pants in Kindergarten.” He commented, making Emilia look at him.

“You find that funnier?” she complained and Emmy ignored her words.

“Only that, this is the adult version of peeing your pants. Wetting your pants.” He stated, making Gab laugh even more loudly.

“You guys are the worst.”

“Or maybe, you are!” Andy finally butted in, turning her phone towards Emmy and Gab and showing them the picture of Henry that she was able to find on her phone.

“Look, this is Henry. Her boss, who sent her that sexy almost see through expensive shirt and that slutty note.” She informed, as Emmy grabbed the phone and looked at the picture of Henry that Andy had extracted from LinkedIn, in which Henry wore a crisp gray suit, sitting on the brown leather swivel chair inside his office and posing quite like a Calvin Klein model.

“Where did you even find his picture?” Emilia asked, almost spitting her drink out of her mouth.

“I have my own ways.” Andy strutted.

“She found him on LinkedIn.” Emmy killed Andy’s buzz, who threw a daggering gaze at her brother.

“Why are you such a wuss? Why do you always have to steal my thunder?” she complained to her brother and Gab decided to jump in and avoid another fall out between the two siblings, as they always fought on the most trivial matter.

“Guys, don’t forget, we have something very important at hand.” Gab pointed towards Emilia, who stuck her tongue at him.

“Shut up! Let the two fight. Things were not even going to be about me anymore.”

The door to the bar opened up, ringing the bell attached to the door to alert the workers of the pub.

Everyone turned towards the door and Emilia stood up, watching her friend Jake walk into the pub.

“Oh, I am glad, I found you here.”

The tall blond man, took his coat off and placed it on the coat hanger, rubbing his hands together and blowing in them, his ivory skin, turned red as cold had hit his skin and flushed his button nose. His hair were struck on the side of his head and the black high neck sweater that he wore, clung to his bulging muscles and pec studded chest.

“I was hoping to find you and get to talk to you.” He announced moving closer to Emilia and grabbing her hands in his.

“Whoa! Easy there cowboy, now don’t go proposing her right away.” Emmy butted in with quite a sarcastic tone, given he was quite well aware of Jake and him of Emmy.

His words ended up startling Emilia, who did feel ashamed of his words.

She turned towards him and threw him a daggering look.

“Emmy!” she warned him to not to embarrass her again.

“What?” he shrugged, showing it off clearly that he wasn’t even the slightest remorseful of his words and attitude towards Jake.

Emilia looked at Gab, who sighed, knowing he had to jump in, so he grabbed Emmy’s shoulder and pulled him away.

“Oh! Can I get a beer?” Jake requested and this time he earned a distasteful look from Gab himself, who chose not to respond to him.

“Am I the only one, or are these people giving these hostile vibes?” Jake asked Emilia, grabbing a seat next to her and she shook her head, giving one final look to her best friends, who clearly hated Jake.

Well – she couldn’t blame them either. Jake, sort of made himself a target of her friends, when Emilia ended up confessing to her friends that she did have a crush on him since college, where both of the two studied journalism and media together but since he belonged to a rich family and had quite the repute, he ended up working a reference in TGN - The Global New Network – one of the biggest investigation news channels in the country that worked on exposing big, litigious and political figures and their dirty work to the entire world.

It was Emilia’s dream to get to work for that network and when she applied for the internship there, Jake applied with her and she even helped him prepare for the interview, but he ended up getting job, only because of his father’s reference. Something that Emilia didn’t know of about until a few months back, when one of Jake’s colleague, showed up at the pub to celebrate a night out and she ran in to Emilia and revealed her the entire truth, which her friends ended up listening to and ever since, started hating Jake and each time he showed up, Emmy would deliberately hide away all the liquor only so that Jake would not have anything to drink.

Another thing that everyone hated about Jake, was the fact that they always imposed that due to her crush on Jake, Emilia was quite gullible to him but she always refused to agree with that and argued that her crush on Jake vanished when she saw him with three different girls in just a span of ten days and realized that he was a playboy.

Now that everyone is caught up with Jake, Emilia shook her own self out of her trance of remembering clearly well why her friends had a very specific reason to be distasteful towards the man,

“Jake, umm, you came here looking for me?” she asked from her friend, who smiled and nodded lazily.

“But you could’ve called me. I just gave you my number like last time we ran in to each other.” She told him and he shrugged.

“Sorry, I lost it!”

“Again?” she c****d, counting it to be Jake’s fifteenth time, he had done so.

She had noticed the change of his attitude from their days in college, when he was always running after her, when he basically depended on her to pass his exams and then fast forward to the drastic rude and ignorant attitude he adapted towards her since he got the internship and finally a permanent job at TGN, whilst Emilia had to work in different coffee shops as a waitress, until she finally landed an internship at the Monger, a gossip magazine, that was obviously looked down upon by people at the TGN.

“Sorry, I keep changing numbers…” he blew a raspberry out of his mouth, trying to act goofy and cute but Emilia was way past his clumsy act. She was clearly able to see how he used his looks to get out of every situation but that had stopped working with Emilia a long time ago.

Jake was smart and manipulative. He understood that Emilia was infatuated with him and kind of crushed on him and since she was the topper of their class, he made a close friendship with her, leading her on to think that they may have something going on and building up but made sure to always call her his best friend at the end of the day. The timely and playful hand touching, didn’t mean anything to him but he made sure that he made Emilia believe in all of that.

But Emilia was quite certain by that point that he was a chauvinistic, self centered person who cared about no one but his own self.

“So? Why were you looking for me?” She rose the question and Jake shrugged.

“I really wanted to see you and…”

“Please! Even a toddler can come up with a better lie.” Andy butted in, getting up from behind the counter with three beer bottles in her hands, making both Jake and Emilia jump in surprise.

“Andy! What are you doing?” Emilia scolded her but the girl simply shrugged.

“Getting some drinks for myself.”

“Can I get one?” Jake demanded and the girl simply gave him the same disapproving look that Gab had given him earlier.

“Jake, why were you looking for me?” Emilia asked and Jake finally sighed, realizing that he needed to get to a point and none of his previous tricks were going to work with the woman.

“Fine, I’ll get to the point!” finally shredding the masquerade of his truth he spoke out, “You see, we are working on a new story involving a Russian mafia human trafficking and money laundry ring and we found the man behind the entire mafia and located him in New York. His name is Igor Konstantin. He has some big figures in the politics and the police working for him and we know some of them as well.”

He took his phone out and showed the pictures of the quite the tall man, certainly lean with grey streaks in his dark black hair and a clean shaved face with tattoos covering up to his hands and necks.

“He is bribing big names in the country, who are helping him carry out auctions for illegal weapons and even trafficked human beings as well. There are children involved in the cartel’s dirty doings and he is being helped. Those people that are involved with him, need to be exposed so that this man could be stopped.”

Emilia swiped through the pictures, as the man walked out of his penthouse and got in to his car in one picture and in some he moved in and out of different clubs and in some in stood hollered up with his men, rounding him, as he stood by the docks and outside an old warehouse.

As she continued going through the pictures, she paused at one, that caught her eye in particular.

The Russian stood next to a black tinted SUV, with the door opened up and in the next pic, a woman in her early forties, stepped outside the car with her sleek platinum bob, resting perfectly well in a side part over her head and in the very next picture the woman’s face revealed, making Emilia gasp.

“Hannah Emerson?” she asked, looking at the picture more closely and recognizing the woman with the Russian mafia boss to be her magazine’s chief editor, Hannah Emerson.

She zoomed in to the picture, trying her best to deceive her own self but who was she kidding, from the puffy fur coat, to the sleek pencil heels and the iconic blond bob, everything screamed it to be Hannah.

“Yes! Editor in chief of the Monger, where you still work at, right?” Jake inquired, looking quite very keenly at Emilia, hoping that she did worked at that stupid magazine, since his entire plan depended on the information that she was about to give him.

Emilia c****d an eyebrow, looking at Jake and wondering what he was up to but she had very slowly started to get the idea that since Hannah was editor in chief of the Monger and she worked there, Jake must have a favor to ask from her.

She nodded, “Yeah! I still work there.”

“Great!” suddenly Jake felt more excited, as he straightened up and finally revealed his plans to Emilia.

“I want you to investigate Hannah and follow her for the next few days, since Igor is in town and she may meet up with him and…”

“Wait! Wait! Hannah is this guy’s…?”

“Mistress?” Jake suggested and his tone showed that even he was not sure about the content of the relationship that Hannah had with the guy.

“Okay! So far, all we know is that Hannah met with this guy once. And we are assuming that she is dating him and is his mistress? Why? Only because she is a single woman, meeting up with some Russian swindler. It could be for any other purpose? Maybe, he is offering her a better job or a better opportunity somewhere else? Their meetings could be about some business stuff or…”

“So? Why don’t you find out?” Jake offered and Emilia shrugged.

“Why should I? I am not investigating for my own work at the Monger and besides, if this thing gets out that Hannah was anywhere near involved with a man who is this dirty and such a scoundrel, it could be a huge loss for my company and I really had a tough time getting a job, I am not risking it for your work.”

“My work?” Jake asked with complete surprise, “Come on, what happened to that Emilia, who was always up to investigate any baddy and take down the bad guys.”

“That Emilia is not in college anymore. That Emilia had go through three years of waitressing, until she finally landed a job and…”

“Do you really want to continue working at that place that earns by gossiping and shooting celebrities at their worst? Emilia you are one of the most keen and talented girls that I have ever seen. Your investigation skills are top tier. It had been three years of me working at the TGN and no one investigates the way you do. Hell, you should be working for the FBI, you are that amazing at your job, once you are determined to get to the bottom of anything. How could you let that happen to yourself?”

“Well, not everyone gets to work at the TGN right after they graduate.” She cooed, hitting Jake back with his own self absorbed tone.

Jake let go off a breath and finally revealed his true intentions, “There is an opening in the research department. If this thing with Igor goes well, I will be promoted to a team leader and I want you on my team. Consider this as a demonstration and show me your abilities.”

Emilia suddenly felt sparked with excitement, once she realized that if what Jake said was true then she would be actually getting to live her dream.

“Jake, I would be risking a lot. If anyone finds out about what I am trying to do, than my job at the Monger will be at risk. And heck, my entire career could be ruined.”

“That’s how you’ll show me that you are a risk taker.”

“Seriously? I am not taking up the task.” Emilia plainly refused Jake’s offer but the man only smirked, only well how to work up with her nerves.

“I know you will.” He winked, getting up from his seat, grabbing his phone and walking up towards his coat.

“I am serious! I am not taking this up.”

“For now? Yes! But a few days later, you will have everything we need to take Igor down and then you will come to me on your own. So, till then, see you!”

He grinned, putting his coat on and walking out of the pub, leaving Emilia annoyed and curious.

She decided to bury her curiosity somewhere deep down in the pits of her mind and go about her own work and business.

Two days later, she was happy that she had not began looking in to Hannah’s case and kept things to her own self. She was also able to find out more about Pamela and Gerard and their confusing case of the s*x tape.

“Turned out, she was the one who leaked that one s*x tape on her own, in order to pressurize Gerard to return back some money that she had lent him and he was refusing to pay her back.” Emilia briefed Stephanie, as she submitted her report and the woman was definitely happy with what she had found so far.

“Great work! How did you run all these links?”

“Oh, just some people that I knew from college.” She shrugged, not revealing much about her informants, since she wanted to gatekeep them, afraid that Stephanie or anyone else would steal them from her and her little specialty would be lost.

Besides, she always had a very hard time finding informants from different places and she wanted to reserve her hard work and bear the fruit of it, on her own.

“Well good work! And this case and your ability to having found out about this whole thing that also with proofs, shows that women can be dangerous.” Stephanie winked playfully and walked towards her seat, leaving Emilia at her table, alone with her thoughts that were getting dangerous.

She opened up the email from two days back that Jake had sent her the morning following their conversation from the night before.

It had all the details that Jake had found out about Igor and his cartel. Those details were quite thorough and Emilia knew that it was Jake’s way of showing that he completely trusted Emilia and it was up to her now, to be able to showcase his abilities to him.

She felt a sudden itch in the back of her neck, that usually came in whenever she would get curious about something and even though she tried her best and stopped herself to the most that she could but she somehow ended up in the building’s parking basement, standing by the exit door, pretending to be busy in her phone, wearing a thick furry coat that would help her hide her face well and soon she saw Hannah getting out of the elevator. Her sleek hair bobbing as she walked, in an extremely sleek light blue long coat that ended right below her knees, helping her mask out her clothes and some part of her lower face as well.

Emilia shut her eyes tightly, still weighing her options and choices and second questioning, whether she really needed to carry that task out or not but to her, the answer was quite plane and simple.

She looked out the glass windows of the office buildings that opened up in to the basement and once Hannah was inside her car, all alone, Emilia noted that she was all alone in her car, while usually she would have her chauffer driving out.

It could mean something or maybe nothing but as Hannah drove away, Emilia also rushed out of the building and out of the basement parking, keeping a close eye on Hannah’s car that halted only a few feet away from the building, waiting by the signal that was at the end of the street where the office building was located.

Emilia immediately grabbed a cab and took her coat off, getting inside the back of the car.

“Follow that black Mercedes over there, my friends are in there, we’re going to the same place.” She lied right away, so that the taxi driver wouldn’t be tipped off by her, if she had just asked to simply follow that car.

The reason was good enough for the driver, who didn’t consider her to be a creep and simply began following Hannah’s car.

Emilia didn’t know if she was going to regret doing that or not but so far, she knew that she had one major problem and that was her need to just investigate things.

Sitting in the back of her car, she rubbed her hands together and heaved a breath of anxiety as she chanted her mantra inside her mind over and over again, something she always did in order to motivate herself to achieve her goal.

“I find out about everything and I will get to the bottom of this as well!”

-------------------------------

Do you think Emilia is doing the right and sensible thing by following Hannah?

Thank you for always reading and supporting my work <3